Homily for the
30th Sunday of Ordinary
Time
Oct. 27, 2024
Creed
St. Francis Xavier,
Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption,
Bronx
This is the 5th, final
homily in a series on the Nicene Creed, preached in alternating weeks in the 2
parishes.
“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the
Lord, the giver of life” (Nicene Creed).
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| Bernini's Holy Spirit |
This final section is the 4th that
begins “I believe,” after the sections on “one God,” “one Lord Jesus Christ,”
and “the Holy Spirit.”
“I believe in one, holy, catholic, and
apostolic Church.” The Church is one,
bound in a unity by the Holy Spirit even tho she’s also diverse—not only among
the hundreds of nations and peoples of the world, but also in 24 different
rites with their particular laws, customs, languages, and liturgies. We belong to the Latin Rite, by far the
largest in numbers. There are also
Byzantine, Maronite, Melkite, Syro-Malabar, Coptic and 18 other “Eastern
Rites,” all united by the Catholic faith and the authority of the Pope, all
united by the Holy Spirit.[2] Many of our prayers to God the Father, you’ve
noticed, end with the phrase “through our Lord Jesus, your Son, who lives and
reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit.”
As we noted 2 weeks ago, the Spirit is the bond of unity between the
Father and the Son; he’s also the bond of unity between the Church and the
Trinity and between all the members of the Church. We are the unity of the Holy Spirit.
Further, it’s the Holy Spirit who
guides our prayer, as St. Paul teaches in his Letter to the Romans: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we
don’t know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with
sighs too deep for words. And the one
who searches hearts knows what’s the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit
intercedes for the holy ones according to God’s will” (8:26-27). The Spirit unites us with the Father and the
Son in our prayer.
Unfortunately, Christians aren’t
completely united. That’s been a problem
since earliest Christianity. Some reject
a truth of the faith like the divinity of Christ or Christ’s working thru the
sacraments; others reject the unifying office of the Holy Father. St. John XXIII called the 2d Vatican Council,
which met in 4 sessions between 1962 and 1965, in part to seek ways to reunite
all Christ’s followers. We’re still
working on that.
The Spirit makes the Church holy
because the Spirit conveys the grace of God to us. We’re not professing that there are no
sinners in the Church. Lord knows there
are, starting with you and me. But when
the Spirit pours God’s sacramental grace upon us, he renders us holy and
eligible for eternal life. More on that
momentarily.
The Church is catholic, with a small c. That’s from the Greek word for
universal. Jesus, Mary, the apostles,
and the 1st believers were all Jewish.
But the Church isn’t just for the Jews.
It’s for every race and nation, like the Gospel itself—“from the rising
of the sun to its setting,” in the words of the prophet Malachi (1:11) and the
3d Eucharistic Prayer.
And the Church is apostolic. As St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, she’s “founded
upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as
the cornerstone” (2:20). She continues
to be guided by the apostles’ successors, the bishops, and by the work of the
Holy Spirit infallibly preserves the apostolic faith—which the Holy Father,
successor of St. Peter, guarantees.
Next, we “confess one Baptism for the
forgiveness of sins.” This brings us
back to the sanctifying work of the Spirit.
Jesus teaches that to enter the kingdom of God we must be “born of water
and Spirit” (John 3:5), i.e., washed in Baptism, which confers the Holy Spirit upon
us, makes us children of God by our relationship to Christ, and unites us to
Christ’s saving death and resurrection.
Baptism and the other 6 sacraments convey God’s grace to us; the Eucharist and others renew
the forgiveness that began when we were 1st washed clean. In the Eucharistic Prayer, listen to how the
Spirit is invoked as we pray that our bread and wine be changed into the body
and blood of Christ and we be firmly united to God thru Christ.
The forgiveness of the sins we commit
after Baptism is particularly renewed in the sacrament of Reconciliation, which
we sinners need on a regular basis. How
good Jesus is; he came to call not the just but sinners (Matt 9:13), and he
makes himself available to us so easily thru his priestly ministers.[3]
In truth, there’s only one Christian
priest, Jesus Christ, whom the Letter to the Hebrews speaks of in today’s 2d
reading (5:5-6). All others whom we call
priests and bishops only exercise Christ’s ministry; they act “in the person of
Christ” by the great gift and call of the Holy Spirit, conferred by the laying
on of a bishop’s hands, anointing with sacred chrism, and prayer.
Finally, we “look forward to the
resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” We’ll all die, as Christ died. But by the power of his resurrection, he’ll
restore to life all who are united to him by the Holy Spirit, “the Lord, the
giver of life.” Not only our souls but
our whole persons, body and soul, are meant for eternal life, for heaven, for
unending happiness. St. Paul writes to
the Romans, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead has made his
home in you, then he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to
your own mortal bodies thru his Spirit living in you” (8:11).
I used to joke when I was a lot younger
that heaven would be an eternity of ice cream and baseball. (That might not be good news for Yankees fans
right now.[4]) Now I think it’ll be far, far better than
that! It’ll be a homecoming among all
who love us most tenderly, starting with the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit.
“This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. We are proud to profess it in Christ Jesus
our Lord.”
[1] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed:
What Christians Believe and Why It Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2003), p. 158.
[2] We might also consider the Anglican
Ordinariate of Catholics who have converted from the Anglican or Episcopal
Churches a distinct rite.
[3] Jesus says there’s only one
unforgiveable sin: “Whoever blasphemes
against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an
everlasting sin” (Mark 3:29). If the
Spirit is the giver of forgiveness and one curses the Spirit, rejects him, or
calls his work evil—then how can that person be forgiven? If the Spirit guides our prayer to God and we
reject the Spirit, how can we come to God?
Unless one repents, of course. As
long as we’re in this life, we can turn back to God, who will never reject a
prayer that the Holy Spirit come to us.
[4] They lost to the Dodgers last nite to
go down 2-0 in the World Series.
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